


like a feather, like a whisper

by theadventuresof



Category: Naruto
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, M/M, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22931629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theadventuresof/pseuds/theadventuresof
Summary: Hashirama and Madara become unlikely friends.
Relationships: Senju Hashirama & Uchiha Madara, Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara
Comments: 13
Kudos: 117





	like a feather, like a whisper

**Author's Note:**

> originally this was going to be WAY longer (maybe i will add more scenes later if I feel like they fit still?) also the title is from ode to the innocent by diablo swing orchestra (so many of my fics have dso songs as titles..........

**☼**

There really is no reason to keep dwelling on it, Hashirama repeatedly tells himself in the weeks after the encounter. The only important thing to take away from it is that no place is truly sacred; no place is free from the grasping hands of conflict—not even his quiet bend in the river, not anymore. The war has reached it now. Or really the war was always there, just out of sight, ready to encroach on him at any moment and force him to acknowledge its presence.

Something else bothers him about it, though. He’s never met a boy his age outside of the clan before. It hits him all at once on his way back to the compound afterwards just how narrow his personal scope is—how narrow the war has made it, he amends. He has his brothers and his cousins, but as much as he wishes it wasn’t so, they’re all there for each other out of necessity first and foremost. Not that he doesn’t love his brothers—he loves them more than anything, in fact! But this new boy intrigues him in a way that he can’t quite put his finger on. He runs the syllables of his name over and over in his mind like he’s running his thumb over a polished stone, or a smooth piece of wood. 

Tobirama is quieter than usual in the weeks that follow. Itama cries more. Butsuma shouts more. It is as if everything in Hashirama’s life is amplified tenfold now. But in reality Hashirama knows he’s just spending more and more time inside his own head, feverishly pondering every second of his chance meeting with that boy. Madara. Scrawny, churlish, raven Madara, with his too-long sleeves and quick temper. And a shinobi on top of that, but Hashirama hadn’t recognized his face, so he must not be an enemy…But then again, he hasn’t seen him at the river since then, even though Hashirama has gone down to that same spot nearly every day, just to see if he’d appear…

And—he’s doing it again. Hashirama slips out of bed to go watch the sunrise and wonders if Madara is out there too, wherever and whoever he is; wonders if the name he gave Hashirama is even his real one (and something tells Hashirama that it is).

He knows it’ll never happen, but he wants to see Madara again.

* * *

And somehow the unthinkable happens.

“Hey,” says a voice behind him. “Long time no see…um…”

Hashirama knows that voice. Somehow it doesn’t properly register with him at first. “It’s Hashirama,” he says dully, unable to inject any more emotion into it than that. His heart feels so heavy. 

“Hashirama,” the boy repeats, as if he’s trying out the sounds on his tongue for the first time. Hashirama watches his shadow move over the stones in his periphery, not really thinking of anything at all. “This time you’re depressed right from the start, huh? What happened?”

It hits him all at once then. He’s at the riverbank and Itama is dead. He doesn’t even remember walking here from the compound, now that he thinks back on it.

“What do you mean?” he says, wanting the words to be true. His throat is stinging. “I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.”

Hashirama bites his trembling lower lip. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Hey, c’mon, you can tell me,” the boy presses on. “I’ll listen, I promise.” 

Hashirama wants to dissolve into the riverbank and never return. He turns around. 

Madara is wearing the same oversized clothes as last time, and his black hair is as messy as ever. His long blue sleeves completely hide his hands, which are resting on his hips in an air of supreme impatience. Something like _It’s nothing, I swear!_ is perched on Hashirama’s lips, but he can’t seem to form the words—and then—

“Spit it out, already, damn it!” Madara shouts.

Hashirama doesn’t mean to flinch.

Something flickers in the boy’s dark eyes. His face changes. “What happened?” he says, in a very different voice.

Hashirama takes a long, shuddering breath.

“My little brother,” he gets out, and then his voice curls up in his throat into a tiny whimper, “died…” 

His face is all wet. It’s probably been wet for a while, because at this point tears are falling from his chin and leaving wet spots in his lap. He feels like maybe he should be embarrassed, crying in front of a near-stranger like this, but he finds (as if he’s watching himself from a few feet away) that he doesn’t really mind if Madara sees.

“I—I see,” Madara says, sounding like he wasn’t expecting this sort of answer at all. He actually sounds a little shaken, Hashirama thinks, replaying Madara’s response in his mind, and he wonders if he and Madara, in addition to both being shinobi, are the same in that regard as well. 

Hashirama takes a breath. He watches the water some more.

“I come to the river because…I feel like…” He feels a little silly now. But Madara doesn’t mind him crying so far, so he might as well say what’s on his mind. “I feel like staring at the water washes away all the sadness…and the haziness…and everything that’s weighing down my heart…”

He looks up at Madara again.

“Are you like me?” Hashirama says, biting his tongue. He’s desperate to know, now. His voice is still weak and shaky from crying. He holds his breath for a moment, then plunges on. “Do you have any siblings?”

“I’m one of five,” Madara answers immediately, to his surprise. It’s the same serious voice as before, Hashirama thinks, and he knows Madara is telling the truth. Hashirama turns around, watches Madara’s face. _Now_ he feels a little self-conscious about his own undoubtedly blotchy cheeks and dripping nose, but it’s too late to start worrying about that. He’s already bared a piece of his soul to this boy; there’s no going back now. 

Madara frowns, and opens his mouth again. “Well—I used to be.”

He says that bit in a hurry, as if he can’t bear to dwell on it for a second more than he has to, and Hashirama looks up at him in—

* * *

**☾**

It’s not quite shock, Madara thinks; it’s more of a dull sort of surprise. He’s stopped crying, though the tear tracks are still fresh and shining on his dusty cheeks. He doesn’t know exactly how it happens, but as their eyes meet some sort of understanding passes between them. Madara kneels and snatches a smooth stone off the bank, turns it over in his fingers. The oval weight in his palm grounds him. He tosses it up and snatches it out of the air. 

“Is it that surprising?” he says. “We _are_ shinobi, after all. We never know which moment might be our last.”

Hashirama looks even more upset at that, and for a moment Madara wonders if he’s misspoken, but his worry is quickly replaced with a visceral need to protect this boy, to comfort him in any way possible. The sky is gray and overcast, and there’s a hint of ozone in the air, but it’s a little too cold for a thunderstorm. Even as he thinks this, Hashirama shivers. There are goosebumps all over his forearms.

“Being a shinobi means facing death at every moment,” Madara says. “There’s always another enemy, another life on the line…and it doesn’t stop…”

“Are things always going to be like this?” Hashirama says, tentative.

Madara stops to think. He turns the stone over and over in his fingers.

“Well…maybe not, you know?”

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s saying; he’s watching the water and holding the stone and the words are just pouring out. “Maybe…it’s all right to want a better life…to deem this one unacceptable…”

A wren is calling somewhere in the forest behind them.

“If there was a way where enemies could become friends…where two sides could come together…” Madara readies his stone, flexes his wrist to get the motion down. “It’d be where they bared their insides to each other, really understood each other, you know?”

He can feel Hashirama’s eyes on him.

“But that’s impossible, because you can never truly understand someone,” Madara says, staring at the opposite bank. “You can’t look inside someone and understand who they truly are—not in the world as it is now.”

He glances down at Hashirama again. He’s biting his lip. 

“So I guess you’re right—we are the same,” he says. “I come here because I want to change the world.”

The stone skips across the gray water, a spinning gray blur, and, to his _great_ relief, clatters to a halt on the other side of the river. It blends in perfectly, as if it had been there all along.

“Told you I could make it across,” Madara says, unable to keep himself from grinning.

* * *

The rain has come and gone now, to Madara’s relief. It had just barely speckled the stones at his feet before the skies turned pale and clear again. They’re sitting together on the bank, Madara with his legs crossed and Hashirama with his knees drawn up to his chest, and Madara has just noticed the faintest trace of freckles on Hashirama’s round cheeks. It reminds him of the rain. He wants to memorize every freckle just to convince himself that Hashirama is really real—that he’s not just some mirage, some phantom, some creature placed before him to tempt him with the idea that he’s not completely alone in his thinking, that the thought of a better life is _not_ too good to be true…

He watches the sky some more, feels a tug of worry in his chest. It must be quite late. He should go back, he thinks, turning his gaze towards the pair of mountains past the bend in the river where he knows the clan is gathered right now. If he looks close enough at the far-off trees he can imagine plumes of smoke rising from the mountainside. Are they having dinner already? He shouldn’t miss it. He stands up.

“I should go,” he says, though he wishes with every atom in his body that he could stay.

Hashirama nods. It seems Madara won’t need to elaborate. They _are_ both shinobi, after all. Now he just needs some sort of excuse—some sort of way to meet up with Hashirama again…he can’t let this be the last time, he just can’t—but how to do it while still sounding reasonably casual…? 

“Will I see you again?” Hashirama says.

Madara looks at him in surprise. He’s hunched over on the bank, staring into the water without an expression, one thumbnail wedged between his teeth. He looks very small again.

“‘Course you will,” Madara says importantly, placing his hands on his hips, “if I have anything to say about it.”

Hashirama looks up again. His face breaks into a smile. “Really?” he says. “You’re sure?”

Madara snorts. “It’s not like I’m _dying_ to see you or anything,” he says, quickly waving that possibility aside with a flick of his wrist. “I just can’t have you showing me up in stone-skipping again. I won’t ever miss out on an opportunity to show my stuff, you got it?”

Hashirama is grinning now. “Oh, really?” he says, standing up from the bank. They’re almost exactly equal in height. “We’ll just have to see about that. When should we meet up?”

“It’ll have to be in the afternoon,” Madara says. His heart is racing at the possibilities now. “That’s really the only time I can get away. Unless I leave way before sunrise, but that’s probably too risky.”

“Right,” Hashirama says. He purses his lips, puts his chin in his hand for a moment. “Next Saturday, then?”

“Fine,” Madara says firmly, and they shake on it. 

(He looks back, just once, as he leaps away into the treetops. Hashirama is watching him go.)

* * *

Madara can’t sleep. The full moon is blazing in the sky outside his and Izuna’s cabin, painting a bright white stripe across the dirt floor. He turns over in bed again, pulls the covers up to his chin, and tries to close his eyes. He entertains the notion of drifting off for a moment, but then an owl calls just outside and breaks his concentration. He cracks one eye open, disgruntled.

It’s no use. He went and drank too much tea this afternoon. He’s wide awake. It must be past midnight by now, Madara thinks, and slowly draws the covers back and lowers himself down onto the wooden rail along Izuna’s bunk, balancing on the balls of his feet. He leaps down onto the floor, drops into a wholly unnecessary crouch. (He has to practice his moves for Hashirama, he tells himself, just like he’s been doing this past week.) The dirt is cold against his toes.

He doesn’t bother with his sandals, just slips out of the cabin and into the patch of grass at the forest’s edge. The moon is huge, soaking the clearing in silvery light, and Madara crosses his arms over his chest and paces back and forth along the edge of the trees, watching his shadow slide over the shriveled grass. He curls his toes into the earth, sighing. 

_Hashirama. Hashirama. Hashirama. Hashirama. Hashirama…_

He’s been counting down the days until they can meet again. His stomach squirms as he thinks of it. How the days had dragged by in agony since they last met! And now that it’s the night before they’re supposed to meet again, it feels to him like no time has passed at all. He panics. He needs more time to get _ready._

Once again he feels that thrill of fearful excitement as he remembers that he’s meeting Hashirama again in less than twelve hours. He—he needs to make a good impression. What’s a good opening line? Something funny, something that Hashirama can’t possibly throw back at him with twice the sting.

He could make fun of his clothes again, but in a sly enough way that Hashirama knows he’s joking. And he’ll need a good entrance—maybe he could arrive a little late, and drop down from a tree and surprise him that way. What time had they decided on, anyway? He can’t remember. Hashirama has him forgetting things left and right—first his name and now this. Although with the name, he had been so distraught at being beaten at a verbal battle of wits that it had completely slipped his mind.

Then the next thought slams into him, hard, practically knocking the wind from his chest. What if Hashirama is _dead?_ He hadn’t seemed like too formidable a shinobi—a rascal, for sure, and with quick enough reflexes, but…

Madara had seen him crying there on the bank and some yet-unidentified instinct, to care for and nurture and comfort, had simply kicked in without his permission. He can’t help it; it’s drilled into him by now. And Hashirama had just looked so _upset._

It occurs to him then that Hashirama might be a spy, might be pretending to be vulnerable for some sinister purpose. He dismisses the thought immediately. Somehow, he knows it can’t be true. They had _understood_ each other, after all. He had let Hashirama see the tiniest fraction of his own insecurities, to let him know he’s not alone in his thoughts, as incomplete a glance as it was.

Hashirama is almost a complete enigma to him. Almost. Madara remembers the look of complete understanding that had passed between them the last time they met, and shivers. He wants to have a moment like that again. He and Hashirama are a part of something, now—not that he knows exactly what it is. But it feels good. _Oh,_ he keeps thinking, as he mulls it all over. _So_ this _is what having a friend can feel like._

* * *

In the end, he doesn’t get any sleep at all. He’s late heading out, too, and it’s past two o’clock when he arrives at the river. Hashirama is already there on the bank, building some sort of tiny shelter out of sticks. He looks up as Madara approaches, his mouth falling open.

“Hey,” Madara calls to him, and as Hashirama’s face breaks into the brightest smile Madara has ever seen, he promptly forgets everything he had so carefully rehearsed the night before. 

* * *

**☼**

“You should count yourself lucky,” Madara says, two months later. “There ain’t many people that I’d do this for, you know.”

 _Oh,_ says Hashirama’s brain, thinking of Butsuma with a flash of panic. “Should you be here right now?” Hashirama says, squirming a bit guiltily. “If you need to leave, you can leave—” 

“No way,” Madara laughs. “I already came all the way out here. And besides, if I go back now, he’ll just put me to work.” 

(Hashirama doesn’t have to ask who _he_ is.)

Madara yawns and stretches mightily, then flops down on the pebbles with a soft sort of _crunch._ “That’s nice,” he mumbles, closing his eyes. 

Hashirama bites back a giggle. 

Madara doesn’t move. “What?” he says. 

“It’s nothing,” Hashirama says. “Just that you sound like an old man.” 

They sit like that, in exquisite silence, as the sun moves in and out behind fast-moving clouds and puts soft shadows on the stones. Hashirama watches the sunlight come and go on Madara’s face, turning his black bangs golden-blue. His skin nearly shimmers like this. He has such long eyelashes, Hashirama thinks, and then decides that this is rather an odd observation to make. He focuses instead on the dark crescents beneath his friend’s eyes. He looks strangely fragile with his eyes closed, as if he could just shatter.

“Madara?” he says.

One of Madara’s dark eyes cracks open. “Huh?”

Hashirama fiddles with the knot on his haori. “How old are you?”

Madara catapults up into a sitting position, looking smug.

“I guess I’d better tell you,” he says, running one hand through his hair importantly. “I’m thirteen—be fourteen in December.”

Hashirama is smiling now. 

“Oh, really?” he says, biting his lip. “I’ll be fourteen in October.”

“No way in hell!” Madara shouts, jabbing an accusatory finger at Hashirama’s face. “You just made that up, didn’t you!”

Hashirama laughs. “It’s the truth, I swear!” he says. “And besides, with a face like that, I’d have thought you were—”

“There’s nothing wrong with my face!” Madara says, but Hashirama is too busy laughing to respond. 

* * *

“I found it!” Madara shouts, bursting through the surface of the water and holding up the missing sandal triumphantly. He climbs up onto the surface of the river, his clothes and hair dripping wet.

Hashirama chokes on a mouthful of water in his surprise. “How on _earth_ did you find it?” he coughs.

“It was wedged between a pair of rocks,” Madara says. “Guess today is your lucky day.”

“Lucky!” Hashirama laughs. “I wouldn’t have _needed_ to be lucky if _someone_ hadn’t tripped and sent us both over the edge of the falls!”

Hashirama winces as he hoists himself out of the water and onto a large flat rock. “I just felt a warm spot,” he says.

Madara snickers, attempting to wring out his sleeves to little avail. “Sorry,” he says, not looking very sorry.

“Thank you, though,” says Hashirama quietly. “A missing sandal would have been difficult to explain.”

They sit dripping together on the rock. The sun goes behind a cloud. Hashirama shivers. His wet clothes are sticking to his back. 

Madara’s eyes flash in recognition.

Hashirama takes a breath. “We should talk about—about our other lives,” he says.

Now Madara’s face is twisted in alarm. He opens his mouth, closes it again.

“I mean—just as a precaution,” Hashirama continues quickly. “We definitely shouldnt know too much about each other, but we should know what not to bring up, you know?”

Madara visibly relaxes. “Right,” he says. “Like where we’re from, you mean?”

Hashirama notices Madara looks up towards the mountains as he speaks. He tries to shove the thought from his mind. He doesn’t want to know. He must not know. He must not… 

“If something ever goes wrong—” Madara pauses. The silence is loaded. Hashirama feels a fleeting sense of doom crawl down his back. “Well…you’ll know.”

A hawk calls somewhere overhead.

* * *

“They’re vicious,” Butsuma is saying. “No humanity whatsoever.”

Hashirama pushes his okayu around in the bowl. Tobirama isn’t eating at all. Rain drums against the roof, unrelenting.

“Devils,” Butsuma says. “Nothing more, nothing less. And that Tajima—he’s cruel, even for an Uchiha.”

Tobirama is unnervingly quiet. He’s been different lately—they both have. Everything feels wrong now, with Kawarama and Itama missing from the breakfast table. He keeps expecting them to walk in barefoot any minute now, Kawarama approaching at a run, Itama trailing behind him and peering cautiously around the doorway before entering. Every time he closes his eyes he sees Itama’s tiny body still half-propped against the boulder, doused in blood. His last moments must have been so fearful, Hashirama thinks, for the thousandth time…fearful and alone…not knowing that help was on the way—but minutes too late— 

He’s able to think about it without throwing up now, so that’s something. “Please excuse me,” he says to Butsuma, unable to pretend to finish his okayu any longer. Butsuma nods. 

Hashirama catches Tobirama’s eye as they both stand up. Tobirama almost immediately looks down at the floor again.

“Tobirama, stay,” Butsuma says, “I have a mission for you.”

Tobirama quickly sits back down. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

Madara is late. _Hours_ late, in fact. 

Stay calm, Hashirama tells himself. Sparrows are hopping around in the brush across the river. He can’t stay calm. Madara isn’t here. They were supposed to meet today. He made doubly sure to make sure he wasn’t being followed as he left the compound—the last thing he wants is to unleash an ambush on his friend, no matter how many times Madara tries to reassure him that he’s strong, he’s the strongest around, he can take care of himself— 

Could he be _dead?_

The possibility plunges down his throat and rips the breath from his lungs. He can’t breathe. He can’t even entertain the notion. His chest is too tight. He thinks his heart might burst.

 _I’m stronger than most of the adults around me,_ he had said… 

And he _is_ strong, Hashirama thinks; he recognizes that much. But there’s still a certain fragility about him, as if at any moment everything could fall into pieces and he’d be ruined in the aftermath. Madara is one tragedy away from collapsing in on himself like a dying star. And maybe—he allows himself to think, trying to steady his breathing—maybe he’s reading too much into it, seeing too much of himself in his friend, but somehow he doesn’t think so. Maybe they both are dying stars. But he still has to protect Madara. That won’t ever change.

He’s probably just busy.

But maybe not.

How Hashirama wishes he had Tobirama’s sensory abilities… but then he’d run the risk of learning more about Madara than is safe for either of them to know, and he wants their friendship to last…Somewhere inside him he knows it can’t last like this; it makes him want to cry, makes him feel like throwing up all over again, but he has to shove that aside because he and Madara are still friends for the time being, however long they have to spend together—but he knows that every time they meet could be the last time and he doesn’t want it to end, _ever_ —

He slinks back to the compound empty-handed and empty-headed as dusk is settling in over the river. His heart is heavy. 

* * *

**☾**

A sudden roll of thunder makes Madara jump, and he pricks his finger on the blackberry bush in the process. He absently sticks it in his mouth, tasting a bit of blood, but he doesn’t bother thinking too hard about it. A thick mist is coming off the swollen river just behind them—it’s been raining for days now—but the berries are at their ripest from all the water in the soil. Madara glances up. Hashirama’s lips are stained blackberry-purple. He smiles.

They take shelter under a stand of giant ferns once they’ve had enough of the rain, and sit cross-legged devouring the morning’s spoils as the rain pounds the riverbank before them.

“I thought you were supposed to be the strongest around,” Madara says as they eat, gesturing to Hashirama’s left eye. “What’s up with the shiner?” 

As soon as the words leave his mouth he realizes his mistake—realizes what, precisely, is up with the shiner. His jaw clenches.

Hashirama laughs, but he looks nervous. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he says. “I’m a quick healer.”

Madara wants to turn around and dive right into the river and swim away forever. “Right.”

Hashirama carefully deposits his pile of berries down in the ferns. The sun is coming out. “Let’s spar,” he says quickly. 

* * *

He had _said,_ multiple times, that he was a shinobi, Madara tells himself. And Madara hadn’t _doubted_ him, per se, but it was just…hard to picture. Hashirama, as Madara knows him, does _not_ give the impression of having participated in life-or-death battles before. Madara knows the world-weary look well—a certain weathered glint in one’s eye, a swift conspiratory nod, a “well-I-haven’t-died-yet” sort of attitude. He had gotten none of that from Hashirama. And yet— 

They had sparred. And Hashirama is _fast._

Because, Madara thinks, even now, he’s still a little bean sprout of a kid, with his bowl cut and his round freckled cheeks and his civilian clothes and his huge pink ears—always inventing stupid useless convoluted jutsus and laughing at inappropriate times—

But he thinks of Hashirama’s warm hands, of the fierce determination on his round face as they had fought, of Hashirama’s fingers clasping around his palm as he pulled Madara to his feet at the end. His heart is racing.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, as he traces the familiar path home to the Uchiha compound. His heart is very confused. _So_ this _is what loving someone can feel like._

* * *

**☼**

He’s always wanted to come to the river to watch the stars. There are just so _many,_ Hashirama thinks, and even though the stones are digging into his elbows and his knees and his chin is digging into his palms, he’s never felt better in his life. Well. He knows Madara isn’t coming, at any rate, so that makes him feel a little better about his friend’s absence. He’s not _supposed_ to be here—had said multiple times he wouldn’t be able to come, and for Hashirama to enjoy the stars without him. And what a clear night it is! The more he looks, the more stars Hashirama sees. It’s nearly overwhelming, looking up at the sky like this. About a thousand frogs are croaking all around him, in every direction. The river smells so fresh. There are little curls of mist rising off it now and then, turning purple in the twilight. Cicadas buzz in the trees, and a multitude of dragonflies are circling above the water, and as he watches an enormous heron lifts off from some invisible perch around the bend and soars upriver like a huge winged snake.

A tree rustles behind him. He doesn’t pay it any mind. And then— 

“Hey,” Madara says. “Long time no see.”

Hashirama jumps. He turns around. Madara looks almost black-and-white in the dim light from the fading sunset. About a thousand questions bubble up in Hashirama’s mind. “You snuck out just to see me?” is what he decides on. His heart is racing. His cheeks feel like they’re glowing.

Madara laughs. “Course I did,” he says. “Couldn’t let you stargaze all by yourself, now could I?”

* * *

**☾☼**

“Good night, Madara.”

“Good night, Hashirama.”

The world feels right.

**Author's Note:**

> i was going to write something way longer but i think i'll save it for when i finally (god willing!!! and i WILL finish it) finish wild things. but i just want to say in general. thank you, THANK YOU for all your support. i really, truly am so SO grateful for all the comments and kudos and just general positivity and kindness around here. it blew me away!!! and sorry also for disappearing off the face of the earth for months like that. i didn't mean to frighten anybody by deleting my blog so abruptly but i was in a not so good spot mentally and i just needed a fresh start. and i also felt like i needed to be in a better place in order to properly embody the........good feelings required for the last chapter of wild things, and i just couldn't pull it off while feeling as bad as I was then. I wanted to do them justice....and give them the happy ending they deserve..... i am okay now though!! and getting better every day. so again thank you so much for all of your kindness. i am so thankful.
> 
> anyway i hope you enjoyed this little fic!! i had a longer version planned, but there were just too many things to include for me to rationalize keeping it at one chapter....ah well, there's always the oneshot pile......
> 
> thank you as always for reading!!!!!!


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